how the Kingdom Hearts series was made
(with full apologies to Tetsuya Nomura who Iâm sure is a lovely person)
Nomura: thank you so much for meeting me, I know how valuable your time is
Disney lawyers: the pleasureâs all ours, sir. you said you had a business proposal about how to profitably combine some of our intellectual properties with your Final Fantasy series?
Nomura: yes [pulls out laptop] ok so I wrote this crossover fic
Nomura: okay team that first game was pretty good but weâre gonna have to step it up. how about we make like, a card-based battle system in this one?
Staff: sir is that a yugioh card falling out of your sleeve
Nomura: also for the storyline I want to introduce a bunch of new characters who are all plotting amongst each other for mysterious reasons and then have them all die violent deaths
Staff: sir have you been reading Game of Thrones
Nomura: ok letâs do everything we did in the first game but EVEN MORE BETTER
Staff: sir are you sure you sent this through QC? the plot is kind ofâŠI mean the tutorial mode stars a different character and is 3 hours long?
Nomura: also use the triangle button a lot, that oneâs my fave
Staff: this doesnât really wrap up the story very well?
Nomura: look itâs really not THAT weird
Staff: sir weâre just not sure you can make a game about existential angst that ends with a child goading her best friend into assisting with her suicide? weâre working with disney here
Nomura: legal said it was ok as long as I never do it again
Staff: sir I thought you said we couldnât make any more games about dead children
Nomura: none of them die. one becomes a comatose vegetable, one is damned to wander hell for eternity, and one is possessed by a sociopath and loses his mind
Nomura: none of them die, legal couldnât touch it
Nomura: remake the cell phone thing as a game
Staff: what? why? I thought we were supposed toâ
Nomura: [scribbling furiously] make the phone game. stall for time. I am Planning
Nomura: [sets posterboard down] and THATâS the whole plot so far
Staff: but that doesnât evenâŠmake anyâŠoh god. Oh god. there are hints about these things in the past FOUR games. how many drugs are you on??